Devil Survivor 2 The Animation – 11

It’s gonna be a bit of a short post this week, and I’m just gonna get my main gripe out of the way. What went through the writer’s mind as this episode of DeSu2A was penned? The gratuitous amount of characters deaths I saw in this episode was uncalled for. Was some kind of mood whiplash intended after the feel-good ending of last episode? Simply needing to up the ante of this Septentrione finale? Did they feel the need for the deaths to fuel Daichi’s relevance? Or hell, was it done just for the heck of it? Because the precedence for this chain of character deaths certainly feels like that very last reason.

Granted, death in DeSu2A seemed to have always come cheaply, and I chalk that up to an acute lack of narrative build-up and character development. Even so, this felt way overplayed. The series of incredible circumstances that lead to each death quite nearly becomes parodical; especially Jungo and Airi making the turn into another group of explosive pods, and Hinako falling right into the trench where the explosive pods also coincidentally landed. This was far from the kind of narrative impact I was expecting. The successive deaths altogether cheapens the severity of Septentrione fight itself when Hibiki simply arrives to save the rest.

In any case, style definitely precedes substance in the delivery of this episode. The fight with the final Septentrione Benetnasch is one hell of a spectacle; with demons and explosions in abundance. Everyone gets a piece of the non-stop action in this episode, and even someone bows out, you can bet they do so in a blaze of glory. Hell, they even managed to hit quite a few fanservice button with the climatic summoning of SMT mascot Jack Frost(actually Black Frost. Technicalities!) and I can safely bet I wasn’t the only person to gleefully HEE HO over his grand appearance. With two more episodes to go, it does seem that the showdown between Yamato and Hibiki will be the climax of DeSu2A’s story, with the winner being able to decide the world’s fate with Polaris. A loud and flashy climax is a guarantee at this point, and frankly, I’m no longer expecting the quality of the writing to improve much over the next two episodes.

while the formal introductions in the beginning definitely raised a death flag or two, it still made no sense to kill off the majority of the remaining cast in such a manner. We have grown to like them, and Hinako, Fumi, Jungo and Airi actually had time to develop as characters, so their deaths had slightly more impact than the ones of Ronaldo, Joe, and Otome. I loved how unimpressed Fumi was when she was about to die though, hot mad scientist chick just does not care. Surprised Makoto is still alive though, but let’s see how long THAT lasts, eh?
There aren’t many ways the story can go at this point, so let’s see how they plan on wrapping this up… And yeah Asobi, you weren’t the only one that was hype when Black Frost was summoned. (I’m glad Daichi was FINALLY useful, but I’m not sure why it was identified as “Jack Frost” instead)
All in all, I enjoyed this episode- despite its flaws.

One day Black Frost felt lonely and ask to the world for a friend. He got one, who resembles himself alot. One day on a summer’s day, his friend melted in the heat and he was lonely again. He cursed the world, the feeling of having a friend and being left alone again is a worser feeling than the one he felt before ever meeting him.

Different Black Frost. This one worked his butt of really hard to become a defender of Love and Justice to deliver magical punishment upon his enemies, also became evil. Now he has power nearly equal to a Overlord!

i think it’s fitting in the overall sense, even if it wasn’t executed well in the narrative. as opposed to the completely unrealistic requirement of having everybody survive in order to get the true ending in the game, this way of doing things makes more sense. really, what are the chances of absolutely nobody dying when you’re fighting your way through the apocalypse?

That’s very true, I guess I never thought about it that way- since I did manage to keep everyone alive when I played the game. But you’re right, expecting no one to die in a situation like this is incredibly foolish.

Black Frost in Japan is still called Jack Frost but with a different characters to make it punny. A standard Jack frost is ジャックフロスト(Jakkufurosuto) while the Black Frost we all know and love is ジャアクフロスト,or じゃあくフロスト (Ja’aku-furosuto). Ja’aku can be translated as “dark” or “evil”.

Actually, I have a slight feeling the anime will go and just have Hibiki restore the world to how it was before and revive everyone. That’s the vibe I’ve been getting after killing the characters off like that, it’s becoming rather predictable.

I was surprised when Botis got killed by Alcor for trying to attack him over different opinions, but I suppose I should have seen it coming. I just find something amusing about the fact that Fumi is completely indifferent to dying.

Oh well, I guess Urobutcher has been infiltrating the studio again. Someone tell them to hire security?
Seriously though, it seems like the creators just killed off half of the cast because they didnt know what to do with them. A pity, because I – and many viewers probably too – have taken a liking to the deceased characters.
And with final Septentrion gone… wait what, Alcor is Septentrion too, so arent they in reality Octontrions? WTF? … anyway, with battle won Yamato makes his grab for power – and it seems everyone who survived so far will be opposing him. Including Alcor, which is imho the game changer here, because Yamato probably could have wiped off the floor with everyone present.
Last but not least, gratz Daichi on finally getting a strong demon! “Get away from her him you b!1ch!” moment was well executed, down to the elementary school memories.

F*** this show. Its not just utterly betraying its source material and characters its actually resorting to some absolutely awful writing. This is one of the most mean spirited adaptations I have ever seen.

The side characters actually getting development and camaraderie!? Maybe its actually trying to respect the source now? HA NO, its just some incredibly cheap gimmick to squeeze some emotion before they kill everyone off. And of course everyone else is so GROSSLY incompetent that they need to be saved by Hibiki, Our Lord and Savior with his BS DEM powers(that he isn’t supposed to have). Then Hibiki of course has to argue with Not!Yamato about THE SAME ARGUMENT THEY’VE HAD EVERY TIME THEY TALKED TO EACH OTHER. Its amazing, the s****y writing is so s****y it makes its own protagonist sound like a broken track record.

Black Frost might have been good, but it falls flat because Daichi barely has any development. Instead of getting an inner look in his character about his insecurities of being useless (like Fate Route in the game) all he does is be the butt of jokes. Its a poor payoff with poor buildup.

I’m not sure if this show has anything to do with the game anymore other than it’s name. Characters are half-ass’d or no-ass’d, deaths are meaningless, pacing sucks, & it just ruined it’s own damn plot.

This isn’t just a failure, it’s boring as hell to watch – something I don’t even remember the last time I’ve said about a show. Please let this mess end it’s suffering already.

That huge gap in the ED.
And while I loved the characters(the scientist with big boobs, not so much), the way their deaths came about felt a bit contrived and cheap. The impact and importance wasn’t there and seemed to have been done just because the producers want to kill them off.
Two episodes left but I’m not really expecting something big here with how this was handled.
I’ll just add this to my (growing) list of game adaptations to play…someday.

My issue wasn’t so much that more characters were killed off, but with the handling of the dead face clips. My understanding thus far was that the clips show what will occur were the viewers not to take any relevant action to avert it. The viewers specifically – After all, if someone has not seen the clip, they could not change their actions so as to result in a different outcome. How then was it Hibiki who saved the remainder of our cast, when he was not with the original 5 members that saw the clip?

I do realize that Hibiki would likely have also gotten the clip for Daichi, but the preceding scenes showed no indication of this. He also didn’t show any feeling of relief at a death deferred by his actions, which given his previous reactions is incongruous had he seen the clip. I’m likely reading too much into all this, but it’s just a point that caught my attention.

My understanding of Dead Face clips is that they will happen unless someone from outside sees them and intervenes. Hibiki most certainly got the clips for Daichi, Io and probably Hinako and that’s what got him off his butt and to the battle.

Those deaths failed to leave any emotional impact… well, maybe except for Hinako because she’s so boss. Anyway, I’m waiting for the anime to finish to play the game and even I can see how messy the writing is. Characters have been getting little to no development and they all feel flat, which is kind of disappointing because I really like the story (despite its weak execution, hence why I’ll definitely play the game after the anime airs).

It also seems to me that the staff killed just for killing. They could’ve at best only killed Fumi as she did have a “reason to die”, being the one who saves them from the demon jamming and all. At worst they could’ve just waited until the final fight to kill all the others. And the fact that it seems like we’ll get something similar to Daichi’s ending just makes it even stupidier, as the ones who sided with him in the game besides Io are Hinako and Jungo.
Last week’s episode was quite good but it didn’t make me forget the bad storytelling of the previous episodes. This week’s episode just put the final nail on coffin.

In terms of storytelling I’m not enjoying this anime very much. It’s a story, it works but it isn’t well executed. None of the character deaths have any impact beyond adding to bleak survival theme. When they go it’s more of a “well they bit the dust” rather than “they’re dead, I’m going to miss them.” Granted if Daichi, Hibiki or Io died I’d feel some sadness, as they’re the only characters who’ve gotten any development.

And I wondered why wait so long to delve into Hibiki’s back story? Information like that would have been more useful early on. At the very least it was a good way of seeing how attached Daichi was to his friend and thus him summoning Black Frost made perfect sense. “Stop picking on Hibiki!” “Hee Hoo!”

I did enjoy the demon fights and it was fun to see everyone let loose with so many high-ranking demons. It was great seeing Pallas Athena, Trumpeter and Black Frost animated. In the end, this show’s saving grace for me is it’s overall story and action, opposed to character developments.

On a quick note: When Benetnasch disrupted the demons’ data link it totally reminded me of the final boss from SMT: Strange Journey. In that game Mem Aleph had a move where she could randomly return same aligned demons to the demonica (a summoning device). Recalling them was slightly easier than our heroes’ predicament in this episode though. (It still didn’t stop Mem Aleph from kicking my ass over and over again until I finally took her down.)

Get your Urobutcher out of my Devil Survivor! Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!?! You kill off some of my favorite characters, but Io survives?!No more Airi, no more Juugo, and no more Hinako. It’s like the anime studio just said t(-3-(t to everybody. That’s bullshit, I better see Io dressed in a maid outfit next episode to satisfy my rage.

I’m not really surprised by the mass deaths in this episode. Ever since we found out that someone can bring forward their wish of what they want to see happen I expected a lot of dying in the last episodes. Have to ramp up the stakes even more for Hibiki to win and get his choice to restore everything to how it was before this all happened. If pretty much everyone is dead before he gets to make that wish it makes it more important that he triumphs over Yamato and what he wants to do.

Not that I enjoyed everyone just getting slaughtered. I didn’t think it was too random since they were enemies and the Septentrion was targeting them. Not surprising that defenseless humans are going to get slaughtered by the First Septentrion we saw at the start of the series.

I don’t think it’s anything to be upset about though. We lose them for an episode before they likely they get revived at the end and show up in an epilogue cameo.

I actually couldn’t help but laugh at the first few minutes of the episode. It’s like the show was trying to see how many loser/death flags they can cram in the shortest amount of time. I haven’t seen anything so morbidly funny since Kraus vs. Bro-goat in Umineko 4.

I’ve always wondered why the decision was made to make this a single season show. There are 3 things the SMT series is good at. Really awesome bosses, really detailed background for the game world, and lots of story. One can argue whether the stories are good or not depending on the game but there’s always lots of it and character development.

DS2 took that last part out. Bad move I say. I really couldn’t care less about the characters. I don’t know them or understand their motivation and frankly I don’t care at this point.